Hurt
by kishiria
Summary: Degin Zabi looks back on his life.


I hurt myself today  
  
To see if I still feel  
  
I focus on the pain  
  
The only thing that's real  
  
The needle tears a hole  
  
The old familiar sting  
  
Try to kill it all away  
  
But I remember everything.  
  
It must be very easy for the people to forget I exist. I woke up this morning realizing that the last time I was on television was my son's funeral. Then again, perhaps this is a kindness towards the people. I'm not a pretty sight. Before the morning's dosages of vitamins, heart pills, insulin pills, blood pressure pills, and the mood stabilizers that don't seem to be doing much, I stood looking in the mirror at myself. I have always been short, lost my hair a long time ago, and my decidedly aquiline Italian features always kept me from being conventionally handsome. Still, when did I suddenly become this sagging, grey-skinned thing that gazed back at me?  
  
I am not old, technically. I am not yet 70, but I might as well be dead. Several times I've tried to open the red boxes that enter my office so that I can start the day's work of monarchy. I never get further than perhaps opening one act of Parliament and staring at the words, never reading them. I always shut the box again and have it sent down the hall to my heir presumptive. To Giren.  
  
What have I become,  
  
My sweetest friend?  
  
Everyone I know  
  
Goes away in the end.  
  
No parents should have to bury their child. I have seen three die, my brilliant and good-hearted Saslo, my powerful and loyal Dozel, and my heart's delight, my Garma. All were the most precious reminders of their mothers, two women I lost to tragedy. While Giren and Kishiria are still alive, they have broken away from the family. They have gone feral, and I can no longer recognize them as my own.  
  
You could have it all  
  
My empire of dirt  
  
I will let you down  
  
I will make you hurt.  
  
I originally envisioned the Zabi dynasty as a family business. Not every monarch does; some refuse to acknowledge that they are mortal. I did. Ten years ago I saw myself as being blessed with the most brilliant group of children a man could ask for, ready to serve their father and the Crown. Well, perhaps at first. Dozel and Garma were always unswervingly loyal. I always knew Dozel was never after my throne. I think Garma was too young to have thought much about it yet. Could it be his early death was a blessing to me as well?  
  
I wear this crown of thorns  
  
Upon my liar's chair  
  
Full of broken thoughts  
  
I cannot repair  
  
Beneath the stains of time  
  
The feelings disappear  
  
You are someone else  
  
I am still right here.  
  
Giren had always been a problem of course, running away with Deykun for a few years as Deykun put his independent country in place. They split up when, in Giren's opinion, Deykun refused to finsh-the-job, in Giren's opinion, by continuing the liberation of the rest of the colonies. He had no choice but to return to the fold. Unemployed would-be dictators are such pathetic things, and he'd never saved a dime. I needed him after Deykun died, because while I might have been Deykun's chosen successor, I wasn't sure how to proceed in bringing about my own vision.  
  
As for Kishiria, I have never really understood what went on behind those cold grey eyes. Looking back, she has always done her best. Her standards are the highest in the family, and she lives up to them. She mothered Garma, she went to the Academy and has been an outstanding officer. Yet I've always kept her at a slight distance, and now I think I made her a second-class Zabi without meaning it, because she doesn't share a mother with any of her brothers. I also wonder if I just wasn't comfortable parenting a girl. Perhaps if I'd been more open with her, as I was with the boys, I wouldn't be lying awake at night wondering if she is after my throne too.  
  
Have I just become something to tolerate until my death?  
  
Stupid question. Of course I have. I have been precisely that for a long time.  
  
What have I become,  
  
My sweetest friend?  
  
Everyone I know  
  
Goes away in the end  
  
And you could have it all  
  
My empire of dirt  
  
I will let you down  
  
I will make you hurt  
  
When I married Nalisse, the world was full of promise. I was working side- by-side with Deykun and my son Giren for the first independent Spacenoid nation. Did I intend to take over from Deykun eventually? Absolutely. Who wouldn't? I even approved of Giren's ambition of spreading independence although we didn't agree on method. I preferred economic means, he favoured war. Saslo moderated our disagreements, but then he died, and part of me died with him.  
  
When Garma fell in battle, he took the rest of me with him.  
  
We are losing the war. The Federation is re-taking Earth steadily, Side 6 is turning on us, and the Feddies have a terrifying new mobile suit called a Gundam. Our advantages are gone and my remaining children are feuding, not joining their efforts as they should, and as I thought I raised them to do. All I can do is sit and watch. I have tried to raise my voice as father of the family, but when I try, the fire I once had is out, smothered by car bomb and crashing Gau. As with the red boxes, I open my mouth, shut it, and let the words come from Giren.  
  
.There is a saying that hindsight is 20/20. Well, no, it's not. Whenever someone says that, it shows they are looking at the past through the eyeglasses of regret. It is tempting to say that I shouldn't have succumbed to depression and despair after the deaths of my wives and sons, but it would have happened no matter what. That's just me. I cannot be what I am not; a sick old man prostrate with grief.  
  
And yet it strikes me that as said sick old man, I still have one weapon left. Giren sees me as weak and ineffectual and he's right. That will make it all the easier for me to reach out one last time to the man I once was, back with Nalisse and Deykun, and go to General Reville to talk about a truce. Giren and Kishiria won't suspect a thing.  
  
I can tell that my wives and sons like this idea.  
  
Maybe I'm not so useless after all.  
  
If I could start again  
  
A million miles away  
  
I would keep myself  
  
I would find a way.  
  
---"Hurt" by Trent Reznor. This story was inspired by Johnny Cash's breath- taking interpretation of it. If Cash's rendition doesn't move you at least partially to tears, you don't have a soul. 


End file.
